Welcome to another installment of Brett’s Dollar Records!
After curiously pitching their cassettes (always great for some vintage blank tapes still in their shrinkwrap), The East Nashville Goodwill last month redeemed itself by adding a few crates of vinyl. Much of what’s on display is religious music, and much of that is local! Yesterday, I scored (for 99 cents) It Is Good by something called Keith Brudevold & Children Sing. We have here the good work of some nice man from Franklin, singing self-penned Christian nursery rhymes, backed by a makeshift choir of youngsters from Madision’s Stratton Elementary. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Brudevold, the vocalist, may have been made in the image of Fred Schneider. The lead-off track, “It Is Good,” is as creepy as it is catchy.
Keith Brudevold and Children Sing | It Is Good
Now, this may be hep enough for the average 6-year-old, but to touch the souls of all those East Nashville dollar bin scavengers, The Lord will have to try something a LITTLE more groovy. Enter Natural High (99 cents), which proclaims itself “a folk musical about God’s Son” on the album art. Production value puts this around ’72 or so, and the intent of this Waco, Texas team of composers would seem to be: strip Jesus Christ Superstar of its secularity and girl-on-Son-of-God action, substituting instead an up-with-people, anti-drug message. Well…I bet it’s good when you’re high. Put this one in that sparesely-populated bin of accidentally-twisted, proto-They-Might-Be-Giants music (along with The Beach Boys’ ultra-twisted 1977 masterpiece Love You).
Ralph Carmichael and Kurt Kaiser | Sequence of Events
